From a historical aspect, this paper discusses the origins of the connective function of the two most popular consecutive adverbs, jiu in modern Mandarin and ji in ancient Chinese. Jiu's adverbial function originates from its serial verb construction carrying a zero anaphoric object, and that of ji originates from the word's verb form that carries a zero anaphoric object, its adverb form that indicates immediate future, and its copula form. All of these origins perform anaphoric functions. The change from anaphora to consecutive connection is well-supported by the fact that many other disyllabic and trisyllabic consecutive and resultative connectives in Chinese are also derived from phrases containing anaphors.